Tools of the Trade
by Aeanagwen
Summary: All they needed was a prop for the show. But sometimes, those old tools can seem to have a life of their own. (A modern ghost story.)


"Hey, how about using this tonight?"

Konatsu looks up from where she's putting the finishing touches on the last of the costumes the troupe will be using tonight—a last minute job, as usual—to find Yotarou standing in front of her, holding down a fan. She blinks at it, then takes it from him, flipping it open. It's plain white on one side, but an elegant sumi-e fox adorns the back, barely three lines of flowing black ink, but still perfectly captured mid-leap.

"For the soliloquy? It's a little plain, isn't it?" she asks doubtfully, twisting it in her hand experimentally.

"Rie's not supposed to be rich," he counters. "And anyway, isn't a fox just perfect for her character?"

"She's not supposed to be rich, but she is supposed to be dreaming big." The fan moves well, though, she admits to herself, waving through the air in curves of warm, rich white even in the decidedly unimpressive atmosphere of their cheap apartment.

"You could ad-lib something about how her secret admirer sent it to her."

Konatsu pauses, narrowing her eyes to look up at Yotarou in suspicion. "I thought," she said pointedly, "that Amano was going to replace the fan."

Yotarou rubs the back of his neck. He smiles unevenly, half-apologetic, through the quirk of his eyebrows suggests that what he's about to say is about par for the course. "That was him on the phone before. He said his kid sister lost the one he was going to bring. So I dug this one up out of the attic."

"Oh, of _course_ she did." Konatsu sighs in heavy irritation, then flicks the fan shut, passing it back up to her partner. "Fine, fine. Just put it in my bag with all the _other_ things we're going to have to lug over there. Be careful with it; if it's from up there, it's probably older than you are."

"Will do," he replies, and spins it lightly around in his fingers. "You about ready?"

"Yeah, just finishing up," she says, straightening and stretching her arms up overhead. "Is Fukuya going to make it tonight?"

Yotarou shrugs. "No one's heard from her yet."

"Has anyone tried _calling?_ " When Yotarou grins at her helplessly, Konatsu rubs her temples. "Why do we have to do _everything?_ " she asks aloud.

"Because we love it," he answers, cheerfully, and adds, "But probably everyone feels like that." She swats lightly at his arm.

"Don't talk reasonably at me," she complains. "Just go get the contact list and find out where she is. I'm going to start packing."

He nods, and releases the white fan to her when she passes by and plucks it from his fingers. She snags the costume as well, a green uniform for Goro the soldier, folds it up, and drops it on top of the nearest box of props and snacks. The fan she slides gently into a side pocket on her purse, and moves to start packing boxes into the car to bring to the theatre.

* * *

In her hands that night, the fan flits and teases, clicking disapproval or sighing with longing, its pouncing fox gleaming in the stage lights as brightly as the day it was painted. It gives nary a creak that would suggest its age, or the fact that Yotarou just pulled it out of storage a few hours ago. When all's said and done, Konatsu steps forward to take her bow and, on impulse, flips open the fan for one last flourish. Camera flashes burst and pop in the swimming dark. Flush with delight, she bows twice, flicking the fan once to the side, once over her heart before stepping back. She shuts the fan with a final, satisfied snap.

* * *

"Hey. D'you hear that?"

Konatsu grumbles and rolls over, trying to burrow deeper under the blanket.

"Heeeeey. Konatsu." He shakes her shoulder once, his large hand a too-warm weight in the summer darkness.

"Ugh, _what?_ " Grumbling in sleepy annoyance, she swats at his hand. She does lift her head, though, and rake back her hair.

The box fan rattles away in the front room, heroically trying to push air through their apartment. Out on the street below, a car trundles past, a humming wind that rises and falls like a prelude. With the window cracked, and through the thin walls, she can hear, faintly, the streetlight humming to itself, an electric buzz that sputters an echo of the flickering bulb.

Humming… No, that's something else. A tripping, clanging sound—a shamisen?There's something familiar about the melody, but…

Konatsu turns a glare on their alarm clock—four in the morning—and growls. Still poised and silent, Yotarou looks down at her, his expressive eyes wide in the slice of yellow light from the window. He's smiling just a bit, one side of his mouth curled up, but it's no kind of hour and she's in no kind of temper to be deciphering his moods. She steals one of his pillows and stuffs it over her head.

"Whoever it is, they should find somewhere else to practice," she says over his squawk of protest. "They're not even in tune."

"Konatsuuu," she hears the start of his whine, but the rest is lost as she slides back down into sleep.

* * *

In the morning, a bleary-eyed Konatsu nearly trips coming out of the bathroom when she has to side-step a narrow, small shape sitting on the floor. She catches herself on the wall, then bends at the waist, picking up what turns out to be the fan from yesterday's performance, out of its box and neatly folded closed, a feather of bright white in the morning gloom. Lips thinning, she stalks towards the kitchen, where a clatter of pans has announced Yotarou's wakefulness.

"Hey! Try to be more careful with this thing, would you?!" She brandishes the fan at him; his eyes cross as he tries to take in the sight of it, rather too close to his nose. "Don't just leave it lying around."

"I—didn't?" he offers, blinking at her. "You're the one who packed it up yesterday, aren't you?"

"What? No, I was helping with the sound equipment."

"Well, I was helping with the backdrops," he counters, and leans past her to paw around on the counter for the canola oil. "Someone must have slipped it in one of our bags and it fell out." He flips the bottle into his right hand and, with his left, affects a quick bow to the fan itself, a half-a-prayer for forgiveness. "Sorry for the rough treatment. We'll do better next time." He's grinning as he straightens, and goes on about his routine, pulling out a pan and swirling a spiral of oil into it before setting it on the stove and turning towards the fridge.

Konatsu scowls at him, then down at the fan. She _had_ brought one of the bags to the bedroom last night, it was true, but she hadn't heard anything fall. On the other hand, they'd been chattering so happily that she could have missed it. She props her hip up on the counter and opens the fan slowly, one slat at a time, inspecting it for damage. The paper glimmers under their bare ceiling light, a faint pearly gloss that makes everything around it seem just a little richer for housing it.

"All okay?" Yotarou asks, elbowing the fridge door shut and returning to the stove with eggs.

"…I think it's fine," Konatsu concedes, begrudging. "Just be careful. This thing's really old."

"We could try to get a display case for it or something…" Reluctance drags at the words even as he says them, and Yotarou trails off, a frown tugging at his lips.

Konatsu scoffs, "As if we can afford it," but privately, she agrees with him. Using the fan had felt _right_ , in a way she can't quite put a finger on, and if they can't afford a proper showcase for it (and they can't, not really), they might as well go on using it. It's presumably what it was made for, after all.

She closes it back up as carefully as she'd opened it and turns. "I'll go finish packing up."

He chirps an acknowledgement, beaming a grin she can feel against her back without even looking at him.

* * *

That evening, she _does_ trip, toppling forward bare steps after walking in the front door. Kotaro yelps and grabs for her, dropping the bags _he's_ carrying, and since her purse hits the ground when she does, things go _everywhere_ —groceries, keys, stray receipts, loose change, and Konatsu.

She picks herself up, leaning back into Yotarou's hands as they land on her shoulders, and grumbles a curse under her breath as she stares at the mess. The bookshelf on the wall in the living room has been nearly emptied, leaving scripts, plays, programs, and other theatre paraphernalia scattered across the room in piles.

"What the hell is—what? What is all this doing all the floor?!"

She stands up, tugging loose from Yotarou's grip, and strides further into the apartment, dodging around drifts of paper. "You check the front room and the kitchen!" she yells over her shoulder at Yotarou. "I'll check the bedroom!"

"R-right!"

A few clipped paces take her into the bedroom, and she makes a quick circuit, eye taking in the rumpled futon, the computer desk, the dresser, the radio—all present and accounted for. She doublechecks the desk, but the computer's still there, monitor and tower both, as is the printer, and the modem. Next comes the jewelry box in the top drawer of the dresser, but it's undisturbed as well, what little jewelry she owns all accounted for.

She heads back into the living room, glancing around at the TV and CD player, and meets Yotarou halfway out of the kitchen.

"Nothing?" she asks, and he nods.

"Nothing missing I can find."

She doesn't bother to quibble semantics with him, turning around and giving the apartment one last searching look. Other than the rifled bookcase, the place is untouched.

"The door was locked…" Yotarou says behind her, the words muttered to himself.

"All that stuff couldn't have just fallen out." Konatsu walks over to it and holding her elbows as she surveys the mess with a frown. "Maybe someone was banging on the wall?"

"They'd have to be banging _really_ hard," Yotarou says doubtfully.

The words cross her mind, _Maybe we should call the police_ , but she looks at Yotarou's troubled frown and injured eyes and immediately banishes the thought. People talked when they moved in, gossiped to each other, rebuked Matsuda for renting to an ex-con. One or two had even tried to take her aside and gently ask her if she needed help or suggest she should go back to her parents; the conversations had gotten ugly quite quickly, especially once Konatsu had snapped about not having a family to go back _to_. No, the last thing they need is another reason for the neighbors to talk.

"Lets just get the groceries put up," she says aloud. "We can pick up the rest after that."

* * *

It's the snoring that wakes her, but as she rolls over, groping for a pillow, something else works its way through the fog.

Shamisen music. Again. She sits up, ears straining to catch an origin point for the melody filling up the room. It seems to come from every side, the cheap walls absorbing as much sound as they reflect, and what before struck her as off-key now sounds distorted, the tones warping where they should have been clear, an impossible vibrato.

She looks to Yotarou, who's sprawled on his back, mouth slack, honking away like a flock of geese. He's a light sleeper when it comes to movement, though. She eases her way out of bed, growing more irritated by the inch with the midnight musician. A neighbor? Some prankster outside? Whoever it is, they're going to get a piece of her—

Something clatters at the front of the apartment, followed by the bell-peal chime of breaking glass.

Shock freezes Konatsu in place, but outrage drives her to her feet. The shamisen playing grows louder as she storms out to face the intruder. There's no one to be seen in the main room, but a pale light outlines the furniture, emanating from the kitchen.

"Who in the hell—" The words lodge in her throat as she wheels around the corner and into air the approximate temperature of an open garage in midwinter. Goosebumps prickle across her arms and for a second she can't breathe.

Instead of the clumsy black-clad burglar she'd been expecting to find looking around desperately for the nearest exit, a woman turns to face her. Long hair, fluorescent blue, drifts around the woman's face; her form flickers as she moves, her kimono glowing a diffuse white. Her lips curl into a languid smile, a long slash of vivid red on her porcelain face. And her eyes—

Groping along the counter, Konatsu's hand wraps around one of the bottles by the side of the stove. Throat still closed in terror, she hurls the bottle overarm, full force. It bursts against the back wall in a spray of glass and fluid, glittering, briefly, in the phosphorescent glow of the woman standing unperturbed in the arc of its passage. Distantly, the sound of footsteps stumbles closer, but the—spirit? ghost? wild stress hallucination?— seems to take no notice, instead turning to look at the stain spreading down the wall and dribbling onto the counter. She raises a hand to her mouth, pantomiming laughter as the shamisen music claps and swells.

And then she's gone, and Konatsu is standing in silent darkness as Yotarou's familiar presence looms behind her. Something brushes against her fingertips, paper-light, and—

* * *

Heart still drumming in his ribs from the sound of exploding glass , Yotarou thunders across the main room to find his partner standing in the entrance to the kitchen, staring blankly ahead into the darkness. He goes to put a hand on her shoulder, but hesitates. She's always spooked easily at unexpected contact, and from her unfocused stare and pale face, just visible in the pale light from the window, she hasn't noticed his approach.

"…Konatsu? You okay? You want me to get the bat?"

She blinks, once, a quick flutter of her eyelashes, and—turns, yes, but instead of jerking and startled, the movement is smooth and exaggerated. One of her hands flicks out to the side; the other rises to gracefully brush her hair out of her face, a sinuous movement of white skin traced out by the moonlight. Her dark eyes lift to meet his, narrowed with consideration, and when she smiles, it's not like her usual ones—neither the broad, challenging grin nor the smaller, introspective curve. Instead, her lips slide into a perfectly even beaming, a moon crescent, a fox-faced smile. He only gets a second to stare at it before she flips up a—fan? yes, _the_ fan—to cover it.

"This is a dream," she whispers, muffled against the paper. "You'd best be back to bed before a baku comes and eats it all up."

"Wh—But…" He stutters to a halt when she flips the fan out to lie over his lips, the same eerie, level smile still resting on her face like a stray thread. He can't read her eyes at all; they're pools of ink under glass, reflecting nothing, a gloss over emptiness. The air smells of discharged electricity and old silk.

She reaches out; her hand alights on his shoulder and she spins him around with just her fingertips, which trace across his shoulder and down his spine. He shivers, then stumbles as she pushes him forward.

"Go."

Adrenaline is a great motivator, but it erodes under confusion like a sand castle in a storm. He goes.

* * *

Konatsu blinks up at the bedroom ceiling. Morning light spills across the room in pale beams; Yotarou snores away beside her. Car engines rumble past outside, and the neighbor's morning exercise program seeps tinnily through the walls. She sits up, raking back her hair and squinting hard at the end of the futon. Something is…

She twists, looking behind her, and sure enough, the pillows have all been moved around. They line the foot of the futon, save one knocked off by a stray kick from Yotarou. Rubbing her eyes and scowling, she pushes the sheet aside and climbs to her feet. She picks up one of the pillows, ready to toss it at him and reprimand him for doing weird things with the bedthings in the night again, when—

Glass under her hand, and the slosh of liquid weight shifting as her arm draws back. Dark, mocking eyes and flickering shadows. The memory returns to her in a rush, and the pillow drops from her nerveless fingers. She turns on her heel and heads for the kitchen.

 _I can't remember going back to bed. Why don't I remember going back to bed? Did I pass out? Ugh, tell me I'm not the sort of person who'd pass out because she got scared; talk about letting down your whole gender._

She grabs at the corner and swings herself around into the kitchen, glaring around it. Nothing _looks_ out of place—there's no stain on the wall, no broken glass, no opened cabinets. She stomps across the tiles, peering more closely at the counters, even crouching down to peer beneath the edges of the cabinets, but there's nothing. No stray shards, no discoloration on the wall, not even any lingering smells. She sets one knee on the floor and twists around to look at the kitchen counter by the stove—the usual assortment of cooking oils and seasonings sit there in total innocence, practically daring her to find something out of place. But she's not usually the one cooking in the morning, and trying to remember which bottle she might have thrown through a haze of darkness and terror yields no meaningful details.

Slowly, she rises to her feet, glancing around her once again, uneasiness bubbling in her stomach. Could Yotarou have…? She steps over to the trashcan and flips up the lid, but it holds nothing but a few old take-out containers lurking under last night's detritus from cleaning out her purse.

So, just a dream, then?

She wraps her arms around herself, shivering once in the lingering chill of the early hour.

"Just a dream," she tells herself, a fierce whisper. "Don't be stupid."

In the back of the apartment, the toilet flushing announces that Yotarou's dragged himself out of bed. Konatsu takes one last glance around the kitchen, then heads back to the bedroom.

* * *

"Konatsu-chan, Yotarou-kun!"

Konatsu turns at the sound of their landlord's voice and finds Matsuda scurrying up the walkway to catch them, spry as a squirrel and about the size of one.

"Matsuda-san!" Yotarou chirps, waving. "Good evening!"

The old man stops in front of them and nods, smiling at the both of them. "Good evening," he replies, and folds his hands together in front of him. "How was rehearsal today?"

Yotarou immediately begins to regale him with stories about ad-libs and mistakes and particularly good line readings, gesturing and posing. Matsuda chuckles dutifully, nodding and exclaiming in all the right places. Konatsu's brow knits as she watches—Matsuda is being very polite, but he isn't engaging like he usually does.

Doubtless he'd come around to the reason he flagged them down eventually, but right in the moment, Konatsu's feet hurt from a long day, and the shower is calling her name in ever-increasing impatience.

"Hey. What's the problem?"

The two men fall silent, Yotarou turning to look at her in surprise, Matsuda's smile wobbling and falling off his face like a glass knocked off the counter. After a moment, he runs a hand over his thinning hair, eyes downcast. "Well… You two have always been good tenants, so I can let it go this once, but…"

Konatsu and Yotarou share a glance. She raises an eyebrow at him, one corner of her mouth tightening, but he just shrugs and shakes his head, eyes round with innocence.

"I had some complaints today about noise," Matsuda goes on, not looking directly at them. "People dropping by to visit is fine, but they need to be more respectful of the other tenants. And if you're subletting, then…"

"We are not _subletting!_ " Konatsu breaks in, voice sharp with outrage. "And we don't have guests! Who was complaining about us?"

Behind her, Yotarou starts walking again, back towards their door. The rhythm of his pace is quick and clipped; in her mind's eyes, he's wearing his criminal-element-survivor face, serious and a little worried. She focuses back in on Matsuda, who twists his hands together nervously.

"You know I can't tell you that, Konatsu-chan. I want to believe you. Oh, I wonder if I should have put those cameras up after all…"

"No one wants you to put up cameras, Matsuda-san," Konatsu says, trying to sound reassuring while fuming internally over their nosy neighbor in 2F. She steals a look over her shoulder, watching Yotarou unlock the door and step inside. "Look, it was probably just something falling. A bunch of stuff fell off our bookshelf last night; maybe it did again today sometime."

She still has no idea how that would be possible; nothing had seemed wrong with the bookshelf's base when they'd looked at it, and Matsuda's expression shares her skepticism.

"Or maybe we left the CD player on. Look, we'll take care of whatever it is," she assures him. "We'll talk to you about it in the morning, okay?"

He nods, reluctantly, but she's already striding off after Yotarou. He's made it most of the way through the front room when she comes up behind him; he veers right to peer into the kitchen nook.

"The door was locked?" she murmurs, adjusting her grip on her purse in case she needs to wallop anyone with it, and follows him into the bedroom.

He nods, lips turned down, and glances around at the empty corners of the room before sticking his head into the bathroom and the shower in turn. He slumps against the wall when he finds both empty, and rolls around to face her, expression plaintive and unhappy.

"Should we call the police?" he asks.

"What? _No_ ," she responds, instinctively harsh, and he winces.

"But—the bookshelf, and that weird music the other night, and now this? What if someone's stalking us—you or me, or…"

Konatsu rakes a hand through her hair, looking away from his eyes. Her other hand winds tighter on her purse strap, knuckles whitening. The silence hangs between them, thick and stifling.

"I don't want you to get hurt," he starts, and Konatsu wants to scream. She shakes her head once, so violently that her ponytail stings her cheek.

"In the morning, okay?" she says, voice rough. "Lets lock everything up. We can talk about it in the morning."

"…Okay." He reaches out to sling an arm around her shoulders, tugging her in to rest against his chest. She sighs, tight and controlled, and winds her hands into his shirt until they stop shaking.

* * *

 _The stage lights burn so hot that her clothes scald her skin; she stalks and stomps up the boards, hair flying, beads of sweat flung away with her every gesture, brief points of light that sparkle in the hanging dark. She's boiling, within and without, some fierce urgency pouring down through her like an overflowing rain gutter even as the stage lights glow brighter and brighter, a rising scream of electricity._

"Wake from death, and return to life."

 _The words fall from her lips and break against the dark, and every stage light shatters._

* * *

Konatsu jerks awake in darkness, her chest burning, a heavy, cloth weight pressing down so tightly on her face she can't even open her eyes. She thrashes, arms flailing, but doesn't connect with anything, it's just thin air, and her frantic kicking likewise just twists sheets and thuds against the floor.

She rolls over, working her nails between the pillow and her face with such violence she feels a gash of pain open on one cheek. With all her strength, she contorts her shoulders and _pushes,_ ripping her head free with a scream of rebellion.

Every wheezing breath hitting her lungs like a knife between the ribs, she hurls the pillow away from her. It hits the wall and slides down, and when it lands, a smoky figure curls up and away from it—a black kimono over broad shoulders, a riot of dark hair, and, when the spirit turns to look at her, a discontent expression on his white features. He blinks lightless eyes at her once, then melts into the wall.

 _Shamisen music._ She registers it simultaneously with everything else—the cold pricking her skin to goosebumps, the smell of burning silk, and—Yotarou. _Where is Yotarou?_

Shaking with fury and terror, Konatsu staggers to her feet, clutching the sleeves of her pajama shirt. She turns in place, only to shriek when she sees the shadowed figure standing in the corner. But it's— _he's,_ Yotarou is paying her no mind, standing in the corner and staring upwards with the faintest of frowns on his face. His crossed arms rest low over his hipbones, and in the strange pale light flickering around him, she recognizes the fan he holds loosely in one hand.

He turns to face her as she strides up to him, and she has barely enough sense to be grateful her fist is already flying when their eyes meet. She sees the shadowed black where his normal warm brown should be for a moment, just a heartbeat, before her knuckles smash into his cheek. The fan clatters to the floor as his back bounces off the wall; she catches him mid-fall, grunting as she takes his weight.

"N-Nee-chan?" He slurs the old address, his ankles tangling under him. She hauls him across the room and towards the front of the apartment.

"Get your _useless feet_ under you!" she hisses, fingers wrapped around his arms. "We're leaving. You hear me?" She raises her voice, yelling at the things in the walls. "We're _leaving!_ "

He's on his feet by the time they reach the front entrance, and stares behind them anxiously as she sweeps everything on the table into her purse. She throws the door open, takes Yotarou by the wrist, and drags him out into the night.

* * *

The overhead light flickers, casting the table tucked at the very back corner of the Yoshinoya in ripples of cheap yellow. Konatsu lifts her head from the table when Yotarou slides into the booth across from her, balancing a tray in one hand and two drinks in the other. The air fills with the smell of beef.

"C'mere," Yotarou says, low-voiced, and picks up a packet of towelettes from the tray.

"The food'll get cold," she mumbles, but leans in closer all the same, tucking her legs underneath her. He opens up the packet and shakes the little square of cloth open, then reaches across the table to cradle her cheek in his free hand. She leans into it, closing her eyes. He pushes back loose strands of her hair and dabs the towelette at the gash on her cheek. The sudden patch of cool and the sting of alcohol draw a wince out of her, and her fingers wind tight in the loose cotton of her shirt. He works in silence, finishing by putting a small band-aid over her cheekbone.

Eyes downturned, she pulls the tray of food over and picks up the side cup of miso soup, lifting it up to warm her face.

"I knew there was something weird about you last night," he says, miserable. "I thought it was just a dream. I should have said something in the morning."

Konatsu stares into the rising steam from her cup. "I thought it was just a dream, too," she says, her breath stirring the surface of the broth, and adds bitterly, "Until I woke up to a pillow trying to suffocate me."

He leans closer, bumping his forehead lightly against hers. She scowls at the cup, taking a hesitant sip from it. It's near-scalding, but she tips it up a little more, drinking down a long draught. The thought of _something else_ moving her body around, living in her bones and taking her over, leaves her feeling like an alien in her own skin, and the hot broth brings her back down to Earth, at least what's left of her perception of it.

"Our apartment is _haunted_ ," she says abruptly, blunt and angry. "How can that be a real thing? What are you even supposed to do about haunted apartments? Do you have to hire a monk? Do they charge you for it? We're barely getting by as it is."

"Maybe offerings?" Yotarou says, frowning down at his beef bowl. "Or is that just for ancestors?"

"I don't know. _You_ don't know. There are books on it, but half of them are probably garbage, and how would we tell the difference? And," she goes on, voice rising as something clicks in retrospect, "we'll have to do it _soon._ Because that's what the noise complaint was about—whatever's haunting our apartment was rattling around in there while we were out, so if we don't get it taken care of, we're going to get _evicted._ "

"Matsuda-san would never!" Yotarou protests, but he sounds distressed all the same. "We'll just have to explain it to him."

"He'll never believe us. No one's going to believe us except a monk, which takes us back to things we can't afford." _And we're never going to find someone else that will rent to us,_ she thinks, but the despair and hysteria _—an orphan and an ex-con, actors, just making ends meet, we'll never be able to afford the up-fronts!—_ swell so thickly in her mouth that she can't get her tongue around it before Yotarou cuts back in.

"We don't _know_ if a temple would charge us or not. Why don't we just call one and ask?"

Konatsu snorts, her throat tight, but rummages around in her purse for her phone. "Do they even take emergency calls?" she mutters roughly, unlocking the screen and swiping over to a search engine. "Hell, do they even post phone num—"

"Hey, who's the message from?" Yotarou, leaning over to peer at the phone, taps at the status bar where, overlooked by Konatsu in her growing distress, a little envelope sits, unread. She blinks at it, then pulls it up.

"Mangetsu," she says, then reads aloud, "'Call me when you get this. I've got a picture you need to see.'" She scrolls down. Several more texts follow, messages of increasing concern ending in, "'I'll just send it. PLEASE call me back.'" Below the final one, a cramped photo, scaled-down to fit the message screen, shows Konatsu and, behind her… Stomach knotting, she taps the photo and drums her nails anxiously on the table as it downloads.

When it finishes, she swipes over to it and holds the phone up to switch the view mode to landscape, and turns up the screen brightness as far as it will go.

"That's the outfit you were wearing for 'Six Days in June,'" Yotarou says after a mutual moment of silent staring.

"Is _that_ the most important thing in the picture to you?!" Konatsu barely stops herself from screeching; instead, her voice breaks halfway through the question. At the service counter, the overnight cashier sticks his head around from the kitchen to shoot them a questioning look; she flaps a hand at him to ward off the concern, eyes glued to the phone screen.

In the photo, Konatsu poses under brilliant stage lights, dressed in a bright red kimono, caught at the moment of a resting gesture, one hand resting lightly against her cheek, the other stretched out to the side, with the fox-painted fan fully opened and turned to face the audience. And, clasping the fan from the other side…

The other figure's back is to the camera, a fine-boned man in dark yukata leaning back in theatric dismay, one wrist pressed over his forehead, the other clutching at the fan. His whole figure is translucent—Konatsu can see her fingers in the photo straight through his own on the fan, and likewise the backdrop in a smudged blur through his torso. Black hair gleams under the stage lights, and though the white hand covers the figure's eyes, his mouth is visible, curved into a smirk as perfectly shaped and sharpened as the tip of a crescent moon.

Konatsu's fingers ache against the plastic shell of the phone. "I'll break that fan into flinders," she hears herself say, voice faint through the yawning roar in her ears. "I'll throw it in the paper recycling bin. I can't believe—that—how did— _augh!_ "

Yotarou pries the phone out of her hand with effort, leaving his fingers twined with hers. He squeezes them in reassurance, and brings the phone up close to his face, squinting at the image on the screen.

"It really is the fan," he marvels, and she checks the urge to wrestle his arm flat against the table. "Wow."

"So that tells us what to look for," she seethes, pushing the tray of food away. "Lets go back. We can deal with this ourselves, tonight, before Matsuda gets anymore complaints."

"Where'd you leave the fan last?" Yotarou asks, still staring at her phone.

" _You_ dropped it in the bedroom because I had to punch it out of possessing you," she reminds him sharply.

"It actually sounds pretty badass when you put it like that," he begins, and grins at her when she snatches back her phone. "Yeah. If it's got a human form like that, maybe we can talk to it after all. Lets go back and see what it wants!"

"It _wants_ to get dropped in the incinerator," Konatsu snaps, but doesn't argue as she pushes herself to her feet and shoulders her purse.

* * *

There's an audible racket from inside the apartment as they walk up to it—shamisen music, and something thumping erratically at the walls. Matsuda is hovering around outside, and turns to look at them as they approach. He opens his mouth, looking ready to say something sharp, then shuts it as Konatsu strides past him, turning on the flashlight from the car's emergency kit.

"We'll handle it," she grits, Yotarou scurrying behind her.

The doorknob is ice cold under her hand; she turns it before she has time to think twice about not getting in touch with a monk first, and slams the door open.

It hits the noise like a touch laid against a ringing bowl. A pillow, hanging suspended in the air, falls to the floor with a soft _fwump_.

" _So,_ " Konatsu announces into the twanging silence, "the fan was in the attic, right?"

Yotarou steps up behind her, looking anxious, and nods when she looks up over her shoulder at him. "Yeah, in one of the old crates the last renter left."

"What else do you think we'll find up there?" She strides in, Yotarou on her heels. The instant they cross the threshold, the shamisen music begins again, low in volume, but sharp and rapid, like a furious whisper from behind a raised fan. Konatsu can feel the hair on her arms rising under the invisible glare.

"Won't know 'til we look, I guess," Yotarou answers, his face trying for cheeky while, in the frigid air, a line of sweat runs down the side of his neck. As they cross the living room, barely touched by the creeping gray light of dawn outside, Konatsu flicks the flashlight beam across the couch. Cushions twitch and tremble and fall still under the light, but their shadows writhe, knotting together into a growing bulk.

Konatsu and Yotarou break into a run, past the TV and couch, and into the bedroom, catching themselves on the wall and each other next to the sliding panel hiding the attic access. Konatsu shoves the wall panel out of the way and boosts herself up onto the shelf inside, reaching up to lift the loose ceiling panel that leads to the attic. Music swirls down on her in a torrent; when she looks back over at Yotarou, she sees a shadow dragging itself across the bedroom floor after them, broad-shouldered, with grasping hands.

"Come on!" She reaches out and grabs Yotarou's wrist, pulling him in behind her as she clambers up into the attic.

Cold wind snaps in her hair, driving stinging dust into her eyes. She barely needs the flashlight up here; as she turns to look around, the blue light pulses and flares, illuminating the whirl of loose paper and stray cardboard. Air pressure closes in on her hard enough to make her ears pop as she gets her bearings. Crates and boxes crowd thickly in the space, with just a few feet left between them to walk in, and standing leaves her bowed over, hunched beneath the low ceiling. Yotarou climbs up after her, putting a hand on her shoulder, his head bumping against hers in his effort to keep it low.

The panels beneath their feet groan, so loudly Konatsu can't tell if it's their shared weight on the flimsy wood or something altogether less natural. The light shines brightest at the far end of the attic, so she pushes through the lung-tightening terror and heads towards it.

All around them, the boxes tear themselves apart; their contents rise into the air and sweep into the maelstrom. Konatsu catches a glint in the air and ducks forward, dodging a chunk of one of the crates, its nails protruding evilly. As she goes to straighten, Yotarou's hand darts out and snatches something out of the air. She glances back, sees _the_ fanin his hand, and looks back ahead. The shamisen music is deafening now, the distortion she remembers from her encounter in the kitchen returned in force.

She presses forward, and—

—all of a sudden, finds herself standing in still air, though the cold is so strong here that her fingers, locked around the flashlight, begin to burn with the onset of pain. In front of her, one lone crate sits undisturbed, resting on top of a dusty, threadbare pillow, once a rich blue, but the cloth now fading and dull.

Yotarou reaches out from behind her and lays a hand on top of the crate. The fan pulls itself out of his fingers to drop limply against the wood, and inside, the shamisen _shrieks_ , a clanging of notes that crawls into Konatsu's head and tries to scratch out her ears from the inside. She claps her hands over her head, crying out, unable to hear herself.

Yotarou pulls the lid off the crate.

The wind dies, snuffed out at the source, and the attic fills with the mundane sound of things falling—clattering wood, shuffling paper, a few crunches of breaking glass.

The shamisen inside the crate is broken at the neck, its strings splayed over the jagged strips of wood like a bird curving its wing over an injured leg. But the wood gleams in the attic's ghostly light, and the belly of the instrument shines white and taut. It had been well-cared for—right up until it hadn't.

"Oh," says Yotarou behind her, a sound of mingled realization and pity, and the strings sigh beneath it. "We oughta fix it up."

"We _ought_ to throw it out the window," Konatsu says, catching her breath, and watches the strings quiver at the suggestion; a woman's shadow flickers against the wall, bowed in on herself. But Yotarou just makes one of his noises, a sort of short, disappointed yowl that makes him sound more like a pleading cat than a grown man.

"Poor thing," he says, and sets the fan down inside the crate. It opens, slowly, its spreading slats covering over the ugly break in the shamisen's neck. "Did you get lonely?"

He picks up the crate, straightens up enough that he bumps his head on the roof, and ducks back down again. Turning to face her, crate held in front of him, he says, earnestly, "Lets get it fixed."

Konatsu gives the instrument a skeptical look, but—well, it might work. _Tsukumogami,_ the stories call this sort of spirit, tools that've fallen into disrepair, and stewed in their decay and resentment. Annoyingly, the stories don't tend to be very specific about what to do with them once they've gotten to that point.

"Konatsu-chan? Yotarou-kun? What happened up there?" Matsuda's querulous voice calls up from below. Yotarou stares at her over the crate, his eyes round and pleading.

Well, anything is better than getting evicted.

"Okay," she relents. "We can try to fix it up. Maybe someone at the theatre will have some ideas."

The blue light drains out of the air in an unheard sigh of relief, and the lazy, drowsy warmth of morning begins to seep back into the walls. Yotarou grins at her, and turns back towards the exit. Konatsu shakes her head, and takes a step to follow, before something soft bumps at her ankle.

She turns and looks down at the pillow, which has dragged itself forward in one scrunching movement, and is clinging to the back of her foot. A seam faces her, contorted into a sad downward curve.

"Oh, you've got to be—" She closes her eyes, sighing as hard as her lungs can manage. " _Fine_. But I'm putting my feet on you for the rest of my life, and you'd better be the softest pillow in the _entire world._ "

The seam line turns upward, and the pillow goes slack, falling across her feet. With ill grace, she picks it up and tucks it under one arm, then follows Yotarou back down into the apartment.

* * *

"He was a rakugo artist," Matsuda tells her the next day over tea, the scalding herbal green he likes even in midsummer. "But there was an—issue with one of the backstage women."

Matsuda is the most circumspect man Konatsu has ever met; for him to use language like that, it's a wonder Konatsu hasn't heard this already, from one of their gossiping neighbors. She snorts and picks up her sewing shears.

The blue pillow lays across her lap, something in the weight of it reminding her of an oversized cat. _Just so long as it doesn't shed like one_ , she thinks, and snips the trailing thread from the end of the new seam. Sliding the loose thread out of the needle, she drops the former to the floor before sliding the latter back into place in her sewing kit. She gives the pillow a pat. She wiped it down already, as gentle a washing as she dared without repairing the stitching; tomorrow, she'll drop by a craft store and get some new stuffing.

The fan sits on the floor between her and Matsuda, neatly closed.

"He left so suddenly; I had no idea he left his things up there!" Matsuda goes on, long-faced. "I'm so sorry, Konatsu-chan!"

Konatsu picks up her tea and blows across it. "Stop apologizing. It worked out," she says, after a sip, and lays her elbows across the pillow, watching the short afternoon shadows. They move across the floor in a silent play—a man with wild hair reaching over to toy with the stray thread, flicking it towards the fan, and a slimmer figure flicking it back away again.

The strangeness of it all races past weird, dances circles around uncanny, and somehow loops back again to just "mundane."

"…They're a little cute, aren't they?" Matsuda says, one hand wrapped around the back of his neck in bewilderment.

Konatsu snorts again.

* * *

The next day, she finds Mangetsu backstage with the shamisen laid across his lap, doing careful, fiddly-looking work with a small rasp and a bottle of wood glue. A freshly polished piece of wood lies next to him on the floor, the same dimensions as the instrument's neck. Yotarou sits nearby, watching in rapt interest and handing him tools by request, periodically sweeping his work area clear.

"Yota, we need some help with—" she begins.

"The knife turns if he's not here," Mangetsu interrupts, looking up at her and adjusting his glasses. "I'll ask you to let him be, please."

Yotarou grins at her and shrugs. Behind him, almost unperceivable in the deep shadows the work lamp casts, a woman's shadow hovers around his shoulders.

Mangetsu glances at it, lips thin, and gets back to work.

* * *

Konatsu sets the pillow down on the dinner table, and Yotarou places the shamisen and fan on top of it. He pulls out a chair and drops into it, propping his elbows up on the table and examining the items with glowing eyes. Konatsu, on the opposite side, eases herself slowly into a chair as well, leaning back in it and crossing her arms.

"So. Are we really going to keep these things?"

One slat opens on the fan. The strings of the shamisen shiver, barely audible.

"I want to!" Yotarou answers promptly. "They're so cool, aren't they?"

"They're weird. And maybe dangerous."

"We haven't had any trouble since then, though," he points out. "I think they were just upset at being apart."

"You think—but that's the trouble; we still don't _know_." Konatsu tries to ignore the rudimentary frowny-face the pillow is trying to make at her. "Anyway, I don't think the shamisen likes anyone but you."

One of the instrument's strings plucks itself. The note hangs in the air, a protest or an accord; Konatsu can't parse which.

"But I can't play," Yotarou points out. "You can, right?"

The string stills in an instant. Konatsu can feel the attention on the back of her neck. She grimaces. "My _mother_ played," she hedges. "I haven't touched one since she left. And anyway, we don't have a bachi."

"Bachi are easy!" He grins at her, straightening up. "We can get a plastic one—"

"You don't play an instrument like this with a _plastic_ bachi, idiot! How cheap can you get!" Yotarou winces at her tone, one eye closing, but doesn't stop grinning at her. Her face flushing, Konatsu hurries on. "We'd need ivory, or tortoiseshell, and we can't afford those. We should send her to someone who can play her."

He shakes his head, his mouth twisting into a stubborn moue. "We can save up," he says. "We can't split them up again."

"Yota—!" she says in a burst of exasperation, but his glance changes direction, and his eyes widen in surprise at the same time as Konatsu feels the chill air brush her the back of her hand where it grips the table. She looks down.

A blue hand is laid over hers, delicate and transparent. She turns in the chair, looking up into the spirit's eyes—softer now, more human, and dark with pleading. The spirit holds the stare for a moment, then looks back down at their hands, running her fingers over Konatsu's in slow, hesitant circles.

"I'm not—I'm not any good at it," Konatsu protests weakly.

"We can learn together," Yotarou says, and closes his hand over both of theirs.

* * *

 _—_ _six months later—_

Konatsu turns the doorknob and eases the door open. She can hear laughter and music from inside the apartment, and the weight in her purse tells her, _Lets not take this too fast._

The air inside is cold, the lack of central heating in the building all the worse for the bitter January frosts outside. Yotarou is sitting, laughing and blanket-shrouded, on the couch, a space heater turning slowly next to him, casting him in its orange light, which mixes strangely with the rippling blue in front of him.

The tsukumogami are performing again, the shamisen floating a few inches off the floor and playing a cheerful, twanging melody. The spirits—the wild-haired man and the red-lipped woman—are leaning against one another on the floor, watching the third of their number perform, a silent pantomime in perfect matched time with the rakugo CD Yotarou has playing. A female artist, Konatsu notes. The third spirit—dark-haired and with a perfect, fox-faced smile—gestures and turns, his white hand spinning the fan in the air above the pillow.

He spots her first, blinks, and vanishes in his surprise, and the other two follow suit. The fan closes and drops onto the pillow, and the shamisen falls silent. Yotarou droops, pouting, but perks up when he notices her. He goes to stand up, but pauses when Konatsu waves her hand at him.

"Don't get up," she instructs, sliding off her coat and shoes. "It looks warmer in there than out here." She pulls a small plastic bag out of her purse and comes over, climbing into the arms he opens to her.

"Cold!" he yelps, as she wraps her fingers up under his shirt.

"Obviously," she tuts at him. "Close the blanket up."

He wraps it back up around both of them, and turns them to face the heater more directly. She sighs in pleasure as the hot air rolls over her in waves, and relaxes back against him. He tugs her into a more comfortable position in his lap. Plastic crinkles, and he looks briefly puzzled, tilting his head up and feeling at the bag under the blanket.

His breath catches.

"Is that—?" he asks, excited.

"Shh," she says. "Let me warm up first."

He hums agreement, but after about thirty seconds of his shifting and fidgeting, and the glances he throws at the shamisen, she sighs, sitting up.

"Ugh, pointless." She pulls her arms up out of the blanket and holds up the bag to him, folded over on itself a few times so it would fit in her purse. He takes it, and hurriedly sets to extricating its contents as she retucks the blanket around them.

The bachi gleams brown and amber in the low light, and a clipped hum stirs across the shamisen's strings and cuts off.

"I used the last of the holiday extra, so we'll have to be careful this month," she says, looking at him upside-down. "No splurging."

He nods, eyes aglow with excitement. Turning his head, he holds the bachi up in the direction of the tsukumogami.

"You ready?" he aims at the shamisen, which plucks back a long, lingering note at the high end of its range.

"Someone shut that CD off." Konatsu sits up, letting the blanket fall loose. She holds her hands right up close to the heater as one of the couch pillows levitates up, wings across the room, and presses a corner against the CD player's power button until its display goes dark. For a few more moments, she rubs and flexes her fingers, and takes the time to gather herself. Finally, she pushes herself off the couch to kneel on the floor. Straight-faced, she stretches out her arms, hands upturned.

A toothy grin plastered on his face, Yotarou gently picks up the shamisen and sets it down in her hands. Shifting her feet beneath her, Konatsu eases the instrument into position, tightening the tuning pegs one at a time. The strings hum under her fingertips, inaudible, but she can feel the vibrato buzzing.

"Honestly, calm down," she tells it, before its nervousness can creep any more under her skin than it already has. She holds her hand up to Yotarou, who flips her the bachi in two fingers, bowing his head over it, still smiling so hard she wonders that his cheeks aren't getting sore.

"Okay," she murmurs, and brings the bachi down in a sharp, confident stroke.

It's different from the other two, she knows right away. The pillow's spirit is playful but careful around her, never throwing the apartment's stray cushions at her like he sometimes does at Yotarou. The fan's spirit is prideful, and startlingly teasing, unafraid to tug a bit at her movements when she uses it on stage—never working against her, but adjusting her poses like a strict teacher. The shamisen, though, lays itself open for her, no aid given, no resistance, just a circuit of energy that tingles up her fingertips, jump-starts her pulse to racing, and pulses back down through her hands once more.

Konatsu bites her lip at the rush of it, and closes her eyes to concentrate. She's chosen a simple song, though whether Yotarou notices or the shamisen cares, she has no idea. She presses her fingers along the strings stretched over the instrument's neck, its repaired wood firm and smooth in her palm; she strikes chords and rhythms against the body's stretched skin; she plays through the sound of Yotarou's hands rapping along the arm of the couch in time with the song; she plays through the sensation of cold air at her back, embracing her shoulders. She plays through one song and into the next, the shamisen's joy infectious, radiantly warm in her hands.

Finally, she strums out a last chord and lifts her fingers from the strings, letting them vibrate freely and gradually fade to silence. She opens her eyes.

Blue light spills over her shoulders; a glance back shows the spirit draped over her, eyes closed in rhapsody, fingers entwined loosely over Konatsu's heart. The other two are draped on each other now, the grinning wild-haired man's arm slung around his slimmer companion's shoulders, while the latter leans into him, smile turned calm and serene, arms draped over his drawn-up knees. Yotarou beams at her, and bursts into applause when she meets his eyes.

"That was so cool! Konatsu!"

He actually has _tears_ in his eyes. Konatsu snorts with laughter in spite of herself, but favors him with an indulgent smile anyway. She lowers the shamisen to rest over her knees, prompting Yotarou to roll over to the other side of the couch, closer to her, and knit his arms around her shoulder from the opposite side as the spirit.

She pats his arm, smiling, and leans her head to rest it against his unruly hair.

It's a strange life, and an even stranger sort of family.

All the same, she thinks they can make it work.

END

* * *

NOTES: Never have I so wished the rest of the canon was available in a language I spoke as when I was writing this, back during the show's season break. I have no idea how different this would have looked if more than half of the story had been released—for starters, Konatsu's kid would probably be in it, which would by necessity shift the priorities of everyone involved.


End file.
